Movie Website Reviews for Weekend of April 25, 2008

April 26th, 2008

The curse of the Unrated website reared its ugly head this week leaving only Baby Mama - Official Site in contention for the weekly website award. That site did have all of the usual features, plenty of clips, interactive features, and more.

Baby Mama - Official Site
The number one site on this week's list, both alphabetically and in terms of quality. All of the usual features are here (synopsis, production notes, cast & crew bios, image gallery, and trailer), there are also plenty of extras. Extras include several clips in the video section, even an behind-the-scenes featurette, and even more clips that are used as intros to each section, a personality quiz (I'm Kate), and a game called Destination Insemination. There are some audio clips and enough sound and animation to add to the site. Overall, it hits all of the right notes and it is really the only site in competition giving it an easy with for the proxy Weekly Website Award.

Deal - Official Site
Just the basics plus a section called Players. That's is probably for all of the cameos in the movie. I say probably, because it is still marked coming soon.

Deception - Official Site
All of usual features are here, plus audio clips in front of each section. There enough sound and animation on the site to not seem boring, but not enough to really stand out.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - Official Site
There's a lot of 'adult material' on this site that I can't get to because I'm not American. This is really annoying since I'm Canadian and I can almost guarantee I can see this kind of stuff on network TV up here. I know there's a way to check to see if the people surfing the site are from the states, they should do that and have different rules for those who don't live under the MPAA domination. What I can see on the site, is mostly very good and it includes the regular features a side site and more. Had so much not be hidden behind an age verification that doesn't take into account Canada (which is 10% of the domestic box office), it might have even been an award-worthy site.

A Plumm Summer - Official Site
All the usual features are here, minus the cast bios, as well as a clip for all of the main characters. That's eight clips, which is more than most limited releases have on their sites. That said, there's not enough style here to really set it apart.

Rogue - Official Site
The basics are here, as well as several clips you can download and even a feature where you can put yourself into a newspaper report about a killer crocodile. On the other hand, there's not a lot of style here, so while its better than most, it is not an award contender.

Roman de Gare - Official Site
Just the basics, and even then the bios are MIA. Additionally, there's no sense of style and the trailer was not effective. It felt like it was trying too hard to convince viewers that the movie was thrilling without once trying to show why it was thrilling.

Standard Operating Procedure - Official Site
A lot more style than most documentary sites have, but not at the expense of content. The opening page has all of the usually features that documentary sites need (basically the bios and the trailer), as well as links to several other sites with more information. The main part of the site includes many of the more famous images and several have with short video clips or text associated with them. It is effective.

Then She Found Me - No Official Site
No official site? Really? For a film with this much star power, it is very unusually for there to be no site. Unusual and disappointing.

Up The Yangtze - Official Site
Like many documentary sites, this one has good information but almost no style. Most of the information is presented in big blocks of text without sound or animation, bur there are several interview clips and that helps set the site apart.

Without the King - Official Site
MySpace. It's not as bad as some MySpace pages, but it is not up to the minimum level a movie promotional site should have.